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Saturday, November 7, 2015

Set in the future - a
world where the past is a dangerous country, not to be talked about or
visited - J is a love story of incomparable strangeness, both tender and
terrifying.

Two people fall in love, not yet knowing where they
have come from or where they are going. Kevern doesn't know why his
father always drew two fingers across his lips when he said a world
starting with a J. It wasn't then, and isn't now, the time or place to
be asking questions. Ailinn too has grown up in the dark about who she
was or where she came from. On their first date Kevern kisses the
bruises under her eyes. He doesn't ask who hurt her. Brutality has grown
commonplace. They aren't sure if they have fallen in love of their own
accord, or whether they've been pushed into each other's arms. But who
would have pushed them, and why?

Hanging over the lives of all
the characters in this novel is a momentous catastrophe - a past event
shrouded in suspicion, denial and apology, now referred to as What
Happened, If It Happened.

The problem with this novel is that it is dull. Quite
dull. It took me a long time to get through it because of its rambling
passages, which though beautifully written, could have easily been cut out of
the novel without any serious effect. The veiled references to the Holocaust
start off interesting enough but soon grow tiresome and somehow get even
vaguer.

If the characters had been more engaging, perhaps the
whole thing could have worked, but neither of the protagonists made much of an
impact. The entire cop storyline felt disjointed and forced, and was never
really resolved, as the murder of an irrelevant character in the middle of the
book.

There are many dystopian novels out there much more
interesting and less boring than this one. It tried to be and say too much and
got bogged down by its ambition.